Oatmeal Week: Overnight Oatmeal Inspired by My Interview with Jennifer Aniston & Her Favorite Oat Dish

When Jen­nifer Anis­ton picked up the phone with a cheery, “Hello, is this Laura?” I didn’t rec­og­nize her voice. I know, crazy. How do I not rec­og­nize Rachel Green? But I didn’t which is com­pletely unbe­liev­able since she’s my celebrity BFF. Do you have one of those? You know a celeb you’ve skimmed enough per­sonal infor­ma­tion about from var­i­ous inter­views to know you love all the same stuff and, there­fore, decide you should be friends. Like Jen­nifer and me. Mar­garita fan? Check. Beach lover? Check. Has a fear of fly­ing? Check. We’re prac­ti­cally twins, right?

Photo by Maya Visnyei

As the for­mer beauty direc­tor of FASHION mag­a­zine and long-time beauty writer, celebrity inter­views are some­thing I am used to doing. Ever since a trail­blaz­ing Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor bot­tled a fra­grance juice and called it White Dia­monds and celeb endorse­ments of any kind cemented a product’s suc­cess, beauty jour­nal­ists have found them­selves in front of an eye-popping range of celebri­ties, and I was one of those writ­ers. In recent years, I’d hap­pily put those days behind me to feed my pas­sion for cook­ing and doc­u­ment­ing family-food mad­ness here on SPC. Then, one after­noon, I received an email with the sub­ject line “Jen­nifer Anis­ton Inter­view.” My friend and for­mer col­league Lesa, who now fills my old post, wrote me about an oppor­tu­nity Aveeno was offer­ing the mag­a­zine to inter­view the actress. As the brand ambas­sador for the nature-based cos­metic giant, Anis­ton nar­rated a lovely series of four dig­i­tal shorts called The Beauty of Nature. “There is no one bet­ter qual­i­fied than you,” Lesa wrote. And she should know.

For years, as my for­mer team­mate in beauty, Lesa lis­tened to me bang-on about my love of Aniston’s quirky Rachel Green char­ac­ter. She’d smile and nod as I’d pro­mote Aniston’s sim­ple, clas­sic style in our fash­ion meet­ings and laughed when I clipped the tabloid head­line “Not Speak­ing to Brad” and stuck it to my com­puter in a moment of sol­i­dar­ity dur­ing that messy split. I sur­prised Lesa with my restraint when I’d reg­u­larly work with makeup artist Robin Siegel and not men­tion my crush on the artist’s long­time pal. How­ever, I shocked Lesa when, after spend­ing an evening with Cover Girl spokesper­son Molly Simms, I told her how I’d insisted on being invited along the next time the Las Vegas actress and her buddy Anis­ton go out for a girl’s night. To be hon­est, all my get-the-restraining-order behav­iour aside, I orig­i­nally liked the actress for all the same rea­sons every­one else did but then started to love how she always seemed so damn brave. As some­one who can err on the side of play­ing it safe, I like that Anis­ton appears to be very resilient and unafraid of what comes her away.

Photo cour­tesy of Aveeno

So, as you can fig­ure, I pulled myself from my self-induced beauty writ­ing retire­ment to finally, finally accept an oppor­tu­nity to inter­view my celebrity friend. If you want to see the story fea­tured on fash­ion magazine.com you can find it here. You should also check out the dig­i­tal shorts which fol­low the jour­ney of Aveeno ingre­di­ents and how they travel from farm to prod­uct. The first short, also found in the above link, is titled “Oat for your Skin.” With oats being one of the top­ics of our inter­view, the food-girl in me couldn’t resist ask­ing her about her favourite way to eat the grain. “I had it this morn­ing,” Anis­ton said. “I had oat­meal with almond milk, cin­na­mon, Ste­via and a sliced Banana. It’s so healthy, low-calorie, high-fiber–it fills you up, lasts a good cou­ple of hours.”

I hate to say it but, see, we’re so friends. I eat oat­meal every morn­ing too and my recipe is very sim­i­lar. How­ever, this time of year, I need to lighten it up a bit–a pip­ing hot bowl isn’t as appeal­ing now that Spring has finally arrived. Inspired by my inter­view, I cre­ated this overnight oat­meal (it’s basi­cally a Bircher Muesli) incor­po­rat­ing a lot of ingre­di­ents from Aniston’s morn­ing meal. It’s so quick to mix-up at night, and Scar­lett and I enjoy mak­ing our own batches since you can toss in what­ever you’re crav­ing. We each put our mixes in mason jars and pop them in the refrig­er­a­tor before bed. In the morn­ing, we just grab spoons and eat them out of the jar.